Overview
- Published in Nature Physics on Jan. 21, 2026, the study reports that chiral phonons possess magnetic moments that can be converted into orbital current.
- Experiments drove chiral phonons in α-quartz using a temperature gradient under an applied magnetic field, producing orbital angular momentum.
- Researchers detected the orbital Seebeck effect primarily in tungsten and titanium films on quartz via the inverse orbital Hall effect.
- The work extends earlier thermal–chiral phonon research by generating orbital rather than spin currents in simple insulators.
- Authors say the approach may enable cheaper, energy-efficient orbitronic devices, while emphasizing it remains an early laboratory demonstration.